The spring 2017 Ritt Lectures, by Prof. William Minicozzi, will take place on Monday March 27 , and Tuesday, March 28. Prof. Minicozzi (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), will deliver a two talk series titled:

“Level set method for motion by mean curvature”

Modeling of a wide class of physical phenomena, such as crystal growth and flame propagation, leads to tracking fronts moving with curvature-dependent speed.  When the speed is the curvature this leads to a degenerate elliptic nonlinear pde.  A priori solutions are only defined in a weak sense, but it turns out that they are always twice differentiable classical solutions. This result is optimal; their second derivative is continuous only in very rigid situations that have a simple geometric interpretation.  The proof weaves together analysis and geometry.   This is joint work with Toby Colding.

Monday & Tuesday, March 27 & 28, 2017 at 4:30 pm

520 Mathematics Hall, 2990 Broadway at 117th Street

Tea will be served at 4 pm in 508 Mathematics

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